Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Essential Philip K. Dick

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 127 posts

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#41

Post by x86x87 »

skyechurch wrote: post #21
x86x87 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PKD is my favorite writer of all times. I believe that even for his greatest works the writing could have been more polished, way better. The thing is PKD does not get you with the form of the writing but with the ideas that he captures. Truly visionary.

Dick can be really rewarding, although he's definitely not to everyone's taste, or a particularly good stylist. This is true of other great writers who deal in extreme psychological states - Dostoyevsky for example. The extreme state for PKD was a metaphysical paranoia (probably augmented by amphetamine abuse), which many people can relate to, although it's usually not as intense or as intricate as in his novels. Dic…

Yup. Sort of upset as I think with better form/style more people would have been exposed to his idea.

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#42

Post by ericmcer »

Trasmatta wrote: post #37

VALIS is the most bizarre but fascinating book I've ever read. I recommend going into it only after reading a number of his other books, and then reading a synopsis of his own life. It's fiction but also psuedo-autobiographical, and a deeply personal story to PKD.

That book made me aware of how your brains internal dialogue can be influenced by the media you are consuming. I read it in a day or so and really felt it altered my “internal voice”, which was a bit unnerving.

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#43

Post by theptip »

For anyone that liked “Blade Runner”, it’s fascinating to go back and read PKD’s “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep”, which Blade Runner was based on. You can see the threads of similarity but it’s a way more surreal paranoid bad-acid-trip vibe.

Can’t remember another adaptation with such a striking difference from the original.

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#44

Post by OscarCunningham »

theptip wrote: post #43

For anyone that liked “Blade Runner”, it’s fascinating to go back and read PKD’s “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep”, which Blade Runner was based on. You can see the threads of similarity but it’s a way more surreal paranoid bad-acid-trip vibe. Can’t remember another adaptation with such a striking difference from the original.

> Can’t remember another adaptation with such a striking difference from the original.

How about 'Total Recall' as an adaption of 'We Can Remember It for You Wholesale'?

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#45

Post by black_13 »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #27

There's a bit in Ubik that stays in my mind. Joe Chip gets into an argument with his apartment door that refuses to open for him because he owes it money. I kinda got that the door was an autonomous money-making agent that held him hostage - a conversation reminiscent of that between Doolittle and the Bomb in Dark Star. It made me see the ridiculous side and ultimate absurdity of micropayments leading to world where…

While living Boston the walkup replaced the keyed doors with electronic locks. They never worked. I kept my key to the cellar and would come through the laundry room and occasionally fall in snow and pee myself. That is dystopia. Dick understood what the future would be lots of dangerous gadgets. The gestaltmacher in the novel the penultimate truth.

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#46

Post by cmsefton »

theptip wrote: post #43

For anyone that liked “Blade Runner”, it’s fascinating to go back and read PKD’s “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep”, which Blade Runner was based on. You can see the threads of similarity but it’s a way more surreal paranoid bad-acid-trip vibe. Can’t remember another adaptation with such a striking difference from the original.

Ridley Scott famously claimed that he “found the novel too difficult to read”. Dick was infuriated with the first draft of the film, and absolutely hated it, writing very sarcastic comments about it.

However, after the script was reworked, and Dick read it, he said "you read the screenplay and then you go to the novel, and it’s like they’re two halves to one meta-artwork, one meta-artifact."

This makes for some great reading delving into what Dick thought of the film. https://soothfairy.com/2022/09/16/what-did-philip-k-dick-thi...

I especially like Special Effects Chief David Dryer's recollection of what Dick said after watching the first reels:

> Dick looks me straight in the eye and says, ‘How is this possible? How can this be? Those are not the exact images, but the texture and tone of the images I saw in my head when I was writing the original book! The environment is exactly as how I’d imagined it! How’d you guys do that? How did you know what I was feeling and thinking?’

> “Let me tell you, that was one of the most successful moments of my career,” Dryer concludes. “Dick went away dazed.”

I also particularly liked Dick's comments about what the film meant to him:

> I can only say that I did not know that a work of mine or a set of ideas of mine could be escalated into such stunning dimensions. My life and creative work are justified and completed by Blade Runer. Thank you … It will prove invincible.

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#47

Post by trash3 »

keiferski wrote: post #6

PKD is one of my favorite sci-fi writers and I recommend Ubik if you're a new reader, although like the article mentions, you definitely need to be in a certain mindset to "get it." The Man in the High Castle has an interesting concept but I don't think it's particularly well-written. One thing that I think goes unnoticed about PKD is how some of his earlier short stories are undeniably, unquestionably bad. Fair Game…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#48

Post by dllthomas »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #44
theptip wrote: post #43

For anyone that liked “Blade Runner”, it’s fascinating to go back and read PKD’s “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep”, which Blade Runner was based on. You can see the threads of similarity but it’s a way more surreal paranoid bad-acid-trip vibe. Can’t remember another adaptation with such a striking difference from the original.

> Can’t remember another adaptation with such a striking difference from the original. How about 'Total Recall' as an adaption of 'We Can Remember It for You Wholesale'?

'Minority Report', in addition to throwing in a whole bunch of filler, flips the whole point of the thing into something deeply Hollywood.

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#49

Post by Jtsummers »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #44
theptip wrote: post #43

For anyone that liked “Blade Runner”, it’s fascinating to go back and read PKD’s “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep”, which Blade Runner was based on. You can see the threads of similarity but it’s a way more surreal paranoid bad-acid-trip vibe. Can’t remember another adaptation with such a striking difference from the original.

> Can’t remember another adaptation with such a striking difference from the original. How about 'Total Recall' as an adaption of 'We Can Remember It for You Wholesale'?

Part of the problem with that adaptation is that We can Remember It for You Wholesale would be best adapted into an almost comedic Outer Limits episode, as written. Total Recall at least manages to keep a lot of PKD's general themes intact despite seriously diverging from the story, and brings in ideas from his other stories to an extent.

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#50

Post by dllthomas »

Jtsummers wrote: post #9
w1nst0nsm1th wrote: post #5

I read all of them, at least the ones published in French... "A Scanner Darkly" is by far the most polished, and also the most twisted.

It was also one of his last novels and most personal, both factors probably influencing its quality. The Linklater adaptation is particularly good and faithful, nearly every scene is close to verbatim from the book. And most of its omissions and changes are reasonable ones for an adaptation into a movie.

I keep saying it's the only Phillip K. Dick adaptation that feels like Phillip K. Dick.
Post reply on HN